Computer and tablet addiction?

Firstly, is your daughter autistic?  It may be self-evident as you've posted here, but you don't explicitly state this.  All you have referred to is her moodiness, her shouting and the arguments - all of which could be talking about any average girl of her age.  If she is autistic, then it may well be that the 'life' on her tablet or laptop is the only kind of life that she can understand and make sense of, and feel comfortable with.  If this is the case, then turning off the internet is definitely only going to cause arguments, because you are denying her the one thing in her life that might make sense to her, or relieve the anxiety she feels.  Can I suggest respectfully that you might wish to consider a different approach to the issue and not just treat her like any other child.  Have you had any input from behaviour therapists? 

Having said all of that, kids wasting their lives by being glued to screens seems to be the norm now.  There can't be many 12 year olds that don't have a phone or a Tablet.  That's the way it all seems to be going.  I don't blame the kids for that.  They're just doing what everyone else is doing, and if they don't do it and their friends do then they're at risk of being left out, excluded, bullied.

My cousin has an autistic son of 24.  He also has learning disabilities and is non communicative verbally.  He spends all day long on his tablet.  It's his world.  Your daughter sounds like she's not in that category, and I assume she's in mainstream school.  Maybe she's just doing what all of her friends are doing.  Or maybe it is the only thing that makes sense to her.  In which case, you really need to do more than simply punish her (which is what you are doing by switching off the internet).  You need to accept that she's different from other children, and as such will need different levels of support to manage her behaviour.  Have you discussed this with her school?  Does she have a SENCo assigned to her?  Work with a behaviour therapist might be able to get her to a situation where she has 'internet times' assigned and she can learn to cope with expecting the internet to go off at a particular time, or after a particular period.  Such learning will probably take a long time to achieve, though.  She may well need time to assimilate this change in her life and get used to the idea of it.  Again, it isn't the same as dealing with a non-autistic child in that sense.  You can't just take something away and expect her to deal with it.

I know I'm a long way from being a child, but I spend a lot of my time on the computer at home.  I use several forums, both for autistic people (like this forum) and for my hobbies and interests.  It allows me a level of interaction with other people that I can control and feel comfortable with and it also allows me to meet people (virtually!) that I would never have met before.  Usually these are interesting people doing interesting things around the world, not people posting photographs of their garden on Facebook or making silly comments on Twitter.  I spend time on Google Earth viewing interesting places around the world.  I stream films and documentaries and listen to music.  I keep up with the news around the world.  I join in discussions.  I also keep a blog and have a YouTube channel.  These are all things that are important to me, and they all happen to mean being on a computer for several hours a day.  I don't think that I'm wasting my life this way, though.  I'm enriching it and also finding an outlet for my work. 

Firstly, is your daughter autistic?  It may be self-evident as you've posted here, but you don't explicitly state this.  All you have referred to is her moodiness, her shouting and the arguments - all of which could be talking about any average girl of her age.  If she is autistic, then it may well be that the 'life' on her tablet or laptop is the only kind of life that she can understand and make sense of, and feel comfortable with.  If this is the case, then turning off the internet is definitely only going to cause arguments, because you are denying her the one thing in her life that might make sense to her, or relieve the anxiety she feels.  Can I suggest respectfully that you might wish to consider a different approach to the issue and not just treat her like any other child.  Have you had any input from behaviour therapists? 

Having said all of that, kids wasting their lives by being glued to screens seems to be the norm now.  There can't be many 12 year olds that don't have a phone or a Tablet.  That's the way it all seems to be going.  I don't blame the kids for that.  They're just doing what everyone else is doing, and if they don't do it and their friends do then they're at risk of being left out, excluded, bullied.

My cousin has an autistic son of 24.  He also has learning disabilities and is non communicative verbally.  He spends all day long on his tablet.  It's his world.  Your daughter sounds like she's not in that category, and I assume she's in mainstream school.  Maybe she's just doing what all of her friends are doing.  Or maybe it is the only thing that makes sense to her.  In which case, you really need to do more than simply punish her (which is what you are doing by switching off the internet).  You need to accept that she's different from other children, and as such will need different levels of support to manage her behaviour.  Have you discussed this with her school?  Does she have a SENCo assigned to her?  Work with a behaviour therapist might be able to get her to a situation where she has 'internet times' assigned and she can learn to cope with expecting the internet to go off at a particular time, or after a particular period.  Such learning will probably take a long time to achieve, though.  She may well need time to assimilate this change in her life and get used to the idea of it.  Again, it isn't the same as dealing with a non-autistic child in that sense.  You can't just take something away and expect her to deal with it.

I know I'm a long way from being a child, but I spend a lot of my time on the computer at home.  I use several forums, both for autistic people (like this forum) and for my hobbies and interests.  It allows me a level of interaction with other people that I can control and feel comfortable with and it also allows me to meet people (virtually!) that I would never have met before.  Usually these are interesting people doing interesting things around the world, not people posting photographs of their garden on Facebook or making silly comments on Twitter.  I spend time on Google Earth viewing interesting places around the world.  I stream films and documentaries and listen to music.  I keep up with the news around the world.  I join in discussions.  I also keep a blog and have a YouTube channel.  These are all things that are important to me, and they all happen to mean being on a computer for several hours a day.  I don't think that I'm wasting my life this way, though.  I'm enriching it and also finding an outlet for my work.